Madam, - Thank you for giving us that splendid piece on our foreign missionaries by Irene Lynch (Rite and Reason, July 17th). I salute Sr Edith Dinan, almost 90 and still in eastern Nigeria after making her way there through the sea hazards of the second World War and Sr (Dr) Leonie McSweeney who arrived a few years later. And still there is Bishop John Moore SMA, Fr Jim Sheerin of Kiltegan, my own brother, Fr Jimmy, and many others.
These and their thousands of colleagues, past and present - in addition to sharing their faith - gave and are still giving their complete lives, under the Nigerian sun and in all other world climates, natural and political, to bring into being and to maintain basic human services in health and education, hospitals and schools, for their people. How appropriate the title of her book: Beyond Faith and Adventure.
Here at home, with Ireland's new faith and gospel focused exclusively on some new economic heaven on this earth, we observe the myopia of some media outfits and propagandists trying to airbrush out the historical record of all this selfless, total life-committed third-world giving.
In this new Ireland you don't interact with other people any more; if you feel you must pretend, just establish a free-phone with a pre-recorded, answering service. O tempora, O mores! - Yours, etc,
Fr TOM KELLEHER,
Kinsale,
Co Cork.